the most striking aspects of Podger’s playing throughout this recital (compared to most 20th-century ‘golden-agers’), is her enhanced range of tone and articulation, her vastly more flexible use of dynamics and phrasing and her temporal suppleness...Podger plays every piece with an explorative sense of excited discovery, playfully pointing up the various correspondences with Bach’s matchless works.

Podger never disappoints, but she has outdone herself here, and I heartily recommend this disc not just to her admirers, but also to those who have not discovered her yet. Even by herself, she plays like an orchestra of delight.

Throughout, Podger is a perfect guide, her intonation unfailing and her musicianship and violinistic personality illuminating this intriguing music at every moment.

Chad Kelly's nifty transcription of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor gets this recital of baroque works for unaccompanied violin off to a flying start, with Podger taking full advantage of the new textures and transparencies which become available when the work's transferred to the violin. But it's the less familiar fare which makes this album irresistible, not least Johann Joseph Vilsmayr's inventive and richly varied Artificiosus Concentus and the short but sweet Prelude by Gasparini - which seems to tip its jaunty cap to Bach's Partita in E major.